Chapter 7: Stowaway
Two Months Later
Two months had passed since that fateful day. The way we worked as a group became routine. Our jobs stayed mosty the same. Marley, who had healed enough and only had a slight limp, began to teach us in hand-to-hand combat for occasions when guns wouldn't be enough. We asked what her qualifications were, but when she was able to knock Santana down in less than a minute, we never questioned her again. We'd been in plenty of fights seperately or in a group, but rarely ever had a group fight occured. It had only happened once, but they were so horribly lame that it was quite pathetic. As our food supply dwindled, tension began to flare. We had to go down to one meal a day, and while we searched further, we brought back less.
It was upon one of our returns from a search that Quinn spilled the beans about our "relationship". A week after we "agreed" to be together, she decided that we should have a date. Not in any position to deny her - arguments in a car never worked out for me - we went to a broken down chinese restaurant and feasted on the very same things we'd gathered that day. When we returned, Melissa almost immediately knew what we had done. When we handed her our backpack, she glared at us suspiciously for a while before blurting out, "You bitches. I can smell the mint on you. You took food without asking?" she'd said it loud enough for everyone to freeze and watch us getting chewed out.
"We had a good reason." Quinn told her, head tilted in confusion. 'Oh, no, don't say it.' I silently begged, trying to telepathically reach her.
"What the hell would make this okay?" Melissa asked, shaking the bag in our faces. Quinn grabbed my hand and met the eyes of everyone in the room before dropping the bomb.
"It was our first date." After a moment of awkward silence during which I merely wanted to disappear, Santana and Brittany clung to each other and begand jumping around, congratulating Quinn on "finally working up the courage to pop the Berry". Melissa and Kitty gawked at us in shock, Blaine didn't quite seem to care, and Sam, Tina, Marley and Kurt shook their heads in disbelief.
Since then, I'd had a horrible time whenever Marley pit Santana and I against each other in combat. She would make a joke or give me a look, I'd blush and drop my guard. And then it was hell for me whenever I lost, even though I had my own personal cheerleader shouting words of encouragement at me. It only would embarass me more and give Santana more fuel. We had never done anything more than kiss, in case some of you were speculating. She had wanted to take it further, but that was one thing I was not going to allow. Perhaps she believed cheering me on would change that, but my mind was rooted.
One day, as Santana was about to slice my arm with a stake carved out of a tree, something off to the side caught her attention. With her distracted, I swept her legs from under her, pointing my stake over her chest. "Ha, I win!" I exclaimed victoriously.
"Bitch." Santana said, getting to her feet. Fearing for my life, I got behind Quinn for protection. Santana looked towards the cluster of trees and pulled out her shotgun from where it lay, aiming it at the forest. My own gun came out as we scanned the area. To my right, something stumbled out of the bush. We aimed our guns at him until we realised it was just a boy.
"Uh, hi." The tanned boy said, surprised to be met with three girls holding guns at him.
"What do you want?" Santana asked, eyes narrowing, her gun never wavering from his head. "Did you think that you needed to try and talk to us because you thought we would save you?"
I nudged her, lowering my gun. "It's Puck, Santana." She smirked and raised an eyebrow, her gun still trained on him. Puck looked down, not sure what to do or say. With a sigh, I grabbed my gun and walked back inside telling Melissa, "Santana's being a bully."
A few minutes later, after Melissa had gone outside to talk to Santana and Puck, Quinn came in and sat next to me on the couch. "Let me guess." I began, closing the book I was reading. "We've got another mouth to feed?" She nodded in response, leaning her head against my shoulder with a sigh. Now we would have to take more precautions and search further for more food.
"That's insane." Brittany said, getting up from her card game with Finn on the floor. These months out here had made her toughen up quickly. We'd seen a more determined and tough side of her that none of us had ever expected to see. Of all of us, she has the most dramatic adjustment to the new world. "Melissa actually allowed one more person in our group?" she asked, coming to stand in front of us.
"Yes. Is there a problem?" the boss herself asked, walking through the doors with Santana and Puck.
"We don't have enough to feed another person." Brittany argued, placing her hands on her hips. "You're already pushing Quinn and Rachel too far!". 'Rachel and Quinn', I corrected in my mind.
"I am the leader of this group for a reason, Brittany." Melissa replied.
"You're the leader solely because Sam had addressed the group with the first person he saw! No one wanted you!" Brittany yelled, getting flushed. That was the one thing no one wanted to address, yet it was there in the backs of our minds; was Melissa who we really wanted in charge?
"I am what's best for the survival of this group." Melissa countered. "Thanks to me, you're still alive!"
"What do you do to keep us running? All you do is sit on your ass while we do our jobs. You don't deserve to be in charge." I noticed Brittany's hand twitch toward her gun, which meant Melissa must have, too. Panic played on the faces of the others, but Melissa didn't hesitate. She drew out her pistol and shot Brittany right in the stomach.
Brittany screamed out in pain as the bullet hit her, and people immediately jumped into action. She screamed profanities while Kurt led her to the couch and laid her back against it. She had to be held down by Blaine and Sugar while Kurt moved up her shirt and inspected the area, cleaning the blood up with masses of paper towels.
"Damn, your aim is fuckin' awesome!" Puck remarked to Melissa, patting her on the back. She shrugged him off and spun on her heel to storm out the door, Kitty and Santana following behind her to comfort her.
Nursing a still screaming Brittany, Kurt held up his hand, his eyes not leaving her wound. "Get me painkillers." he ordered. Tina went into the pantry and grabbed one of the bottles there and tossed it to Kurt. He spilled three of them into his hand and held them to Brittany's bloody lips, who swallowed them dry.
Puck ran a hand down his mowhawk and awkwardly shuffled over to Brittany. "Uh, hi." He said warily Brittany growled at him, still unable to speak around her pain. Puck cleared his throat before beginning again. "I-I know that it's my fault she shot you. But I have something to make it up to you." He smiled hesitantly and turned to go back outside. Curiously, the others all pooled into the living room to get a better view. He came back in carrying a tattered backpack and pulled out a small grenade.
He turned it around in his hand, admiring it for a bit before saying, "This is the perfect weapon. And in return for you guys taking me in, I'm giving it to you." He hesitated befote holding it out. Brittany carefully reached for it, grinning dopily.
"Where'd you get it?" Marley asked, admiring the thing lustfully. For the next hour or so, those two were inseperable, talking about weaponry. It was hard to follow their conversation unless you knew a lot more about Mikhail Kalashnikov and his like-minded peers than their names. While everyone did their own thing, the front doors burst open. Paolo and I were the first to draw our guns in a kill-first-ask-questions-later type of response, but we lowered them when we noticed that it was Melissa, Kitty and Santana, coughing and sweating.
"What's going on?" Marley asked warily, going over to them.
"They're...everywhere." Melissa gasped. Before we could ask for clarification, Blaine - standing by the window - exclaimed, "Oh, shit!" capturing our attention. I ran to the window only to see a horde of bloody, mangled corpses making their way towards the house.
"There's an army out there!" I yelled. Sam pushed the window open and trained his gun. Blaine, Sugar, and I opened fire as well.
"They're on this side, too!" Tina called from the window across from us.
"You idiots brought back death?" Kurt shrieked, moving from his spot where he knelt by Brittany. "If you knew they were following you, why did you come back?" They began to yell while we tried to kill of the zombies on our side which was turning into a difficult task.
"Can you shut up and get your damn guns?" Sam growled out. They all immediately stopped arguing and grabbed their weapons, crowding against windows, trying to get as many headshots as possible.
Puck and Finn were the only ones without guns. Finn seemed okay with this, but Puck groaned out in indignation. "Uh, hello? Where's my gun? I gave you guys my grenade!" As his pleas fell on deaf ears, we kept taking turns at shooting up the zombies, but they were like a gross version of the Hydra: shoot one zombie, three more come to avenge him.
"We can't do this." Melissa admitted, still keeping her gun trained on the zombies. "Tina, Kurt, and Kitty, start packing up and quickly." Wiping away sweat from a cut on my cheek, I glanced at Brittany. She was working up a sweat of her own, groaning in pain. One hand was wrapped around her stomach and the other held Puck's grenade. How were we going to escape with her?
In a few minutes, everything we remembered was packed up and slung onto our shoulders. Once we were ready to go out the back door, I heard Marley ask, "Aren't you coming?" The rest of us looked back as we saw Brittany slide her gun and backpack over to us, hobbling to her feet.
"What the hell are you doing?" Santana asked incredulously.
Brittany smiled sadly. "I'm going to help you guys out." I saw the her passing grenade back and forth between her hands and then it clicked in my head: she was goig to blow herself up with the house. Before the words to stop her could come out of my mouth, all the windows crashed inwardly. The zombies had finally managed to break them, and they were tripping over each other as they tried to climb inside.
"Guys, get out! You have to do this!" Brittany yelled. I was shaking my head, wanting to talk her out of it. We helped Marley, and we could help her. But someone wrapped their arm around my midsection and began to drag me outside. I tried to fight the strong hands and heard screaming, though I wasn't sure if the sound was my own. My legs were scraping across the ground, twigs and rocks jutting into my skin, but I barely paid any attention to it. It seemed surreal, how slowly everything moved. For the tiniest second, even as the zombies began clawing at her, it seemed as if Brittany smiled.
And then everything turned into a giant yellow blur.
•••••••••••••
Okay. So you know how I told you this was an original piece of fiction? Since I'm the only writer in my circle of friends, they all coerced me into writing this (I'm still writing and they're still giving me ideas). You can tell that I didn't take this seriously if you compare my style of writing here to Beast or Red With Envy. RWE is the first novel in a series I'm actually about to publish. Beast is my most popular story. So, anyway. I know the characters are AU, and it's probably only going to get worse since I simply put Glee names over my characters.